After connecting with Rich Hernan Olaya through a service called Three Day Rule Matchmaking in July 2022, Maia Buttrick Comeau drove two hours from her farm in Carlisle, Pa., for their first date in Philadelphia, where Olaya lives.
The drive was worth it.
“Rich walked in, and he was so handsome and exactly like the pictures,” she said. “He was in linen head-to-toe, espadrilles, wavy gray hair.”
Olaya, for his part, said he was “blown away” when he spotted Comeau.
The conversation flowed, and the date continued from drinks at Parc to dinner at Wilder to more drinks at the Ranstead Room, all around Rittenhouse Square.
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After the first date, Olaya and Comeau took turns visiting each other.
“He was much more used to dating people down the street and having a lot more closeness and seeing each other, and I was not,” Comeau said. “I was kind of more of an isolationist by nature. The fact that it was two hours was just perfect for me initially.”
Over time, the visits grew longer.
Comeau, 49, was born in Concord, Mass., and moved to Carlisle when she was 9. She received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Penn State University. After nearly two decades of living in Washington and 12 years at a think tank, Comeau moved in 2016 to a nine-acre farm in Carlisle, where she grows vegetables and cares for rescue animals. She is the founder of Comeau & Company, a public affairs consulting firm.
Olaya, 56, was born in Bogotá, Colombia. When he was young, his parents left for the United States, living first in Queens, N.Y., to seek better opportunities while Olaya and two of his three brothers stayed in Colombia with their aunts and uncles. When Olaya was 7, he and his parents reunited in Vineland, N.J. He graduated from Drexel University in Philadelphia with a bachelor’s degree in architecture and has lived there since. He is a founder of O Z Collaborative, an architectural firm.
“I enjoy working on the farm, chopping wood,” Olaya said. “It was easy for me to jump into that role, to break out my Carhartt jacket and mud boots.” He added: “It’s like ‘Green Acres,’ except I’m Eva Gabor’s character.”
At the beginning, neither expected marriage. Olaya’s previous marriage had ended in divorce in 2013, and he wasn’t eager to marry again.
Comeau, for her part, said she “didn’t ever act like I was searching for love or marriage. I wasn’t actively dating, and I loved that I wasn’t.”
Secretly, however, she said she dreamed of a white-dress, church wedding.
Olaya’s feelings about marriage shifted once he felt secure in their relationship. “I got to a point where I was able to completely love Maia and allow her to love me without the fear of being hurt,” he said. “Then the concept of marriage was a no-brainer.”
During a cycling trip across Ireland’s West Coast in July 2025, they broached the topic of formally committing to each other for the rest of their lives.
“We had moments, just the two of us, standing on a beach, looking at the ocean,” Olaya said. “We were two dots on the planet, but we were together.”
A few months later, in October 2025, he proposed with a vintage white gold ring while they were on vacation in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, with their mothers, Hope Comeau and Gladys Olaya, and Olaya’s two grown sons, Matheo, 25, and Manny, 27.
They were married by the Rev. Melissa Wilcox, an Episcopal priest, on July 25 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Carlisle, where Comeau attended services as a child.
After the ceremony, Comeau, Olaya and their 300 guests moved to the farm for the reception. (The couple will continue to live between Philadelphia and the farm.) “We had the animals put in their stalls for dinner,” Comeau said. After dinner, the couple’s horse, donkey, goats, sheep, chickens and a peacock were allowed to roam free.
“The sun was setting,” Olaya said. “It was a lovely little bucolic scene.”
For many of their guests, that evening was their first time being so close to farm animals, Comeau said. “We have pictures of these city dwellers tentatively touching them.”
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